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Hal Higdon's Intermediate II plan has two "recovery" runs per week. By recovery, Hal means they should be leisurely, fun and relaxed. They're designed to help rejuvenate your muscles and spirit, while increasing your running economy. All of which will help you focus and perform better on your key days. I think recovery runs do all of these things. Except they also suck.

The worst part, I've found, is that without putting myself into either a "zone" or oxygen debt, my mind has time to think about a lot of things. But what it thinks about mostly is how this isn't much fun.

When I do a marathon pace run, I don't have time to worry if a dog's on a leash. If he's not, I'll just out-run him. I don't worry about the strange twinges in my knee or shin or foot because all of that will be dealt with only after I've put those marathon pace miles in the bank.

But on the recovery runs, I just feel like an old guy with ADD shuffling through s…

If running were only allowed to be done in the morning, I would not be a runner.

There, I said it.

Not only that, but I'm incredibly jealous of those you who bop out of bed at 5am (or earlier!). How do you do that?? When do you sleep??

Here's my deal: I'm mostly a lunchtime runner, thanks to shower facilities at my employer. The only time I get out of bed to run early is on the weekend. Most weekends, that's only one day and on that one day, I find it crazy crazy difficult to do. The creativity of the groggy whining in my head at 7am on Saturday surprises even me.

Today, however, I had a client coming to the office around lunchtime. Tomorrow, I have a morning long run planned. Running after work would mean barely 12 hours between two hard workouts, which meant: a morning run for me today, too.

I should also mention that while walking the dog PRIOR to my run at 7am, my neighbor drove by on the way home from his 5:30am run, playing loud music and waving frantically. God, morn…

Mind you, I munch on a small handful of pills with my breakfast. Things that promise optimum recovery, endurance, etc. The types of pills one finds when wandering the drug store aimlessly while one's wife and daughter decide whether they want to buy autumn chestnut or summer sunset to give their hair a little something-something extra.

But I've never bought anything specifically for my diabetes simply because most of those supplements say they help you even out your blood sugars, and (thankfully) I got that covered.

But then commenter Jed from yesterday suggested I add Cayenne pepper to my program, saying that he uses it and it reduces the amount of insulin he needs. Truth be told, I wouldn't care how much insulin I need, except for the crux of my argument, which was: more insulin = more weight retention = heavy marathoner. Here's a link from a guy who seems to think Cayenne fixes pretty much everything ex…